Motorway to nowhere
BANGLADESH was born poor and, today, after almost four decades of its sovereign existence, poverty lashes at the vast multitude of our population with full fury. It is not that the people at the helm have, at any point of time, been oblivious of the problem. Rather, the leaders have been copious in their promises and pledges to deal with the menace at all costs. Economists and experts burnt late night candles to measure the depth and dimension of poverty with all earnestness.
Researchers and scholars have brainstormed the issue. The government and its planners, as well as aid representatives, are exasperated with the vastness of the scourge. Animated discussions are still taking place, with the pundits and self-help gurus delving into its complexities.
However, all efforts have so far been inconsequential. The only visible result is that Bangladesh is sinking deeper and deeper into an abyss with more and more people coming to live under the poverty line, and the end of the tunnel is nowhere in sight.
Poverty has, however, been an asset for some who intelligently cash in on it. It comes handy for third world leaders to devise a "case" for increased aid money, of which mostly they and their cronies are beneficiaries. The chronic poverty gives enough bargaining chips to aid dispensers for imposing stringent conditionality. It is to the advantage of a rich few, a patron-client relationship in domestic politics.
There's more. The poverty and related problems provide the academics spanking new topics to discuss -- and researchers find themes for writing their treatises. Scores of students have obtained degrees on poverty alleviation from reputed seats of learning in the west.
Thousands of NGOs are floated in the name of fighting poverty, illiteracy and disease. Officials of IMF, World Bank and ADB play with the figures to prepare their baffling statistics. The subject allows the elite to get together frequently in the city's posh convention centres and be in the limelight to put on intellectual gloss.
Public debates on national issues are few and far between in our country, but the theme of poverty alleviation somehow enjoys currency. The seminars and round tables on the subject are largely attended by people least exposed to poverty and, as a result, their knowledge about it is at best surreal.
The views expressed by a group of pseudo-experts who are often called upon to speak on the topic are often stale and stereotyped -- repeated many times earlier -- and the discourses are invariably reduced to platitudes. The recommendations are vast and varied, ranging between utopia and mere phraseology.
Notwithstanding some positive fallout of the exercises, in terms of dissemination of awareness, the great ideas generated during the deliberations are rarely carried to a point of fruition -- let alone their implementation on the ground. Each time a roundtable on poverty alleviation is held its salient points buzz across the selected circle for a couple of days before they die down.
The biggest problem in the poverty alleviation exercise is perhaps its credibility. Not only that, most of the participants of these exercises have never been known to show any serious concern for the poverty of the masses, they are also not prepared to pay any price for its alleviation if that means paring down their own perks and privileges and parting with their vested interests.
The problem is that most of us would welcome an end to poverty, but hesitate when it affects our interests and comforts. We have lofty ideas, but retreat into our cocoon of self-preservation when the question comes of sharing either affluence or poverty with the deprived.
The romance of poverty and love for the poor are nothing new in our part of the world. During the heydays of leftist politics its heady brew intoxicated even the scions of the aristocracies. Belying conventional wisdom, the young, idealised sons of the landlords often led the peasants' uprising. But then it was little more than springtime flirtation.
Today, we are trying to accomplish the Herculean task of poverty alleviation only through lip service. It is a "mission impossible." More so, when the situation has been further exacerbated by widespread economic disparities, unjust distribution of wealth, chronic corruption, bad governance and stratification of society into groups, classes and vested interests.
Poverty and the related problems need to be viewed in their entirety. They have to be fought on multiple fronts and all at one time. No patchwork, half-hearted efforts, and piecemeal programs can really alleviate poverty. Yet, that's what we are doing, if anything at all. No wonder, the goal has eluded us all these years.
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